Following disaster, Free Press Association of Japan launches

After the huge catastrophe that hit Japan this
March, the country is in need of a freer media culture. A less restricted
media would allow more people access to information at press conferences. In
the name of this aim, in April 25, a group of Japanese freelance
journalists launched a new organization called the Free Press Association of
Japan (FPAJ).

Since Northeastern Japan's great earthquake and tsunami and
the crippling of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant, I have been even more troubled
by the Kisha Club system, particularly in terms of the potential for the Tokyo
Electricity Power Company (TEPCO), and the government to restrict
information, possibly even endangering the lives of ordinary citizens in Japan.
The Kisha Club system restricts access to press conferences held by government
officials, so that only those journalists associated with large mainstream
media organizations are allowed in. FPAJ is dedicated to taking Kisha Clubs on.

As Michiyoshi Hatakeyama, a freelance journalist and one of
the key organizers of the FPAJ told me recently, "In Japan, it is the major media itself
that plays the main role in blocking non-member journalists from access to
information."

Journalists working outside of the establishment press have
other issues, beyond Kisha Clubs. For instance, they are dissatisfied with the mainstream
media's overuse of high-level anonymous sources, who are allowed to have their
views broadcast without taking personal responsibility.

The lonely but invaluable journalists taking on
practices that crackdown on press freedoms tend to be a brave lot. Take Yu
Terasawa, 43, a die-hard freelancer investigating police corruption who
has rebuked the overuse of police power. Many in the mainstream media have
neglected this angle, afraid to lose their access to information
from bureaucrats. Or prominent freelance journalist Yasumi Iwakami, who
once declared, "We are fighting against the Kisha Club cartel!" Iwakami has
devoted himselfto working on
opening press conferences.

The FPAJ was formally launched only a few weeks ago and now,
press conferences hosted by the FPAJ are open to any journalists or ordinary
citizens. Many internet journalists, bloggers, and even entertainers have
attended. The first FPAJ press conference was held on January 27 with former Democratic
Party of Japan leader Ichiro Ozawa.

"Ozawa feels mistrust towards the information manipulation
by the mainstream media, who use only the negative parts of his remarks," Hatakeyama
told me when I interviewed him for Shingetsu.

The independent journalists of the FPAJ also point out that
their organization is paid for by private donations and member contributions,
while the closed Kisha Club system is subsidized by Japanese taxpayers. Uesugi
has estimated that public expenses in 2009 for maintaining official press rooms
at the central government ministries amounted to more than 1.3 billion yen
(about US$16.7 million). Yet the exclusive clubs clearly do not have the public
interest at heart.

I can say from experience that the Japanese mainstream media have not fully
exercised their duty to pick up the voices of people suffering as a result of
the devastation after 3.11. Traveling as a translator with Peter Foster, a
British correspondent of The Telegraph
in March, I visited stricken sites in northeast Japan, such as Ishinomaki-city,
Minamisanriku town, Miyagi Prefecture and Rikuzentakata, Iwate prefecture.

We witnessed a crowd scavenging for food on the streets of
Ishinomaki city, about fifty kilometers from central Sendai. The Japanese media
were emphasizing the many countries sending relief food to Japan rather than
the rampant hunger of the local population.

"If you are in the media, please tell them we have no food,"
people told us. A construction worker named Takahashi showed us a couple of
unfrozen gyoza (dumplings) and fish cakes he had picked up from the muddy
streets. "I need it for my elderly parents, who are in their 70s," he told us.

Foster, who had reported on other natural disasters in India and Indonesia, also expressed his
exasperation with the Japanese media. "Why does the media here refrain from
broadcasting stories about people who are clearly short on food?" Foster asked
me. "They seem to only care about maintaining the beautiful image of their
country." He wrote the same in his Telegraph
article.

Takashi Uesugi, a director of the FPAJ, testified at an
April 6 media session with dozens of ruling Democratic Party of Japan lawmakers--including
former Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama--that the performance of the established
Japanese media system following recent disasters had been abysmal. Immediately
after 3.11, he said, the government excluded all online and foreign media from
official press conferences on the "Emergency Situation," except for the special
sessions eventually set up for the international media. "Freelance journalists
and the foreign media are pursuing the facts, even going into the government's high-radiation
exclusion zone around the plant, yet the government continues to restrict their
attendance at official press conferences at the prime minister's office," he
told the session. In Uesugi's view, the lack of trust that Japan's media system engenders has
contributed to the rumors circulating at home and overseas.

With so many evacuee and civilian voices unheard, and so
many needing more information on radiation problems and disaster relief, FPAJ has
arrived not a moment too soon.

Makiko Segawa is a Tokyo-based staff writer for the Shingetsu News Agency.